


the little giant

by bluemooning



Category: Haikyuu!!, Le Petit Prince | The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Platonic Relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-08
Updated: 2016-09-16
Packaged: 2018-08-13 21:57:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7987630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluemooning/pseuds/bluemooning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They say you can see mirages in the desert; of water that doesn't exist, or loved ones long gone.</p><p>But Ushijima ends up finding a boy who fell from the stars, here in this unforgiving landscape. And he's as real as the emotions Ushijima has long learned to suppress.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. an overdue encounter

**Author's Note:**

> The book 'The Little Prince' is one of my favorites. It's downright magical. This is just my homage to it.

They run into each other, unexpectedly, as the sky is turning shades of pink and red and orange, as the air becomes colder around them. 

“Wakatoshi!” Tendou cheers, and drops his grocery bags to the floor. He wraps Ushijima up in a bear hug, and the latter doesn’t fight it. When they pull apart, Tendou’s nose wrinkles up. “You’re all sweaty,”

Ushijima picks his sweat-soaked shirt from his body. It dries quickly, when he’s standing in place like this, and it makes him shiver. “Well, I was running,”

Tendou laughs, and it makes a smile prickle at the corners of Ushijima’s mouth. 

“It’s been…” says Tendou, and his mouth forms the shape of a question. He picks his bags up slowly. The action gives him time to think, to sort out his words.“I don’t even know, but it’s been years,”

“It has,”

Tendou throws his arms up, and in doing so, throws his groceries back to the pavement. They fall without mercy, and surely now he will have to deal with bruised fruit and dented cartons for days to come. But that seems to be the very last thing on Tendou’s mind. He gazes over Ushijima more, with that same attitude from their high school volleyball days. It keeps Ushijima on his toes, keeps him guessing.

“What’ve you been up to, Wakatoshi?” Tendou asks. He shifts his weight from foot to foot, and when a group of middle school girls squeeze on by, he jolts in place. He moves aside to clear the sidewalk. But even at this time of day, just before night takes over, the streets are still lively. As the seconds tick on by, both of them are beginning to feel a bit in the way, with their tall, tall bodies, and grown stature. They take up so much space.

Ushijima finds a bench for them to sit on, and Tendou arranges his groceries beside him. They pop a squat and play the part of people watchers.

“Well?” Tendou repeats himself. He lets silence settle between them. And it might have hardened up and stayed there forever, if Ushijima hadn’t spoken up.

“A couple years ago, I was travelling through Africa,”

Tendou’s eyes boggle. “Seriously?”

Ushijima nods. His head casts a shadow on the pavement. “By motorbike. I was crossing the Sahara when it broke down. I was stranded for a week,”

Tendou very nearly tears his red hair out. His body twists, as if possessed by demons. He leaps to his feet and performs a strange dance, once that makes Ushijima raise an eyebrow. “WAKATOSHI! WHAT THE FUCK??” Ushijima makes a noise from his throat, but Tendou cuts him off anyways. “YOU GOT STRANDED...IN THE SAHARA??”

“Yes,” says Ushijima, and leans back on the bench. 

Meanwhile, Tendou’s shaking his head, his arms crossed over his chest. “Unbelievable,” he says, and suddenly points an accusing finger at Ushijima. “You’re impossible, Wakatoshi,”

“Really,” Ushijima murmurs.

“But,” says Tendou, and his eyes have taken on a new character. They’re hungry for more. “What happened?”

“What happened?”

“When you were stranded!”

Ushijima’s gaze seems to be focused on a distant point. It’s like he’s lost in his thoughts. And Tendou starts to think that he’s gone for good - but then he talks, in that same voice as always. It presents the facts; nothing more, nothing less. 

“When I was stranded...it was hard. I tried to repair the bike, but I didn’t know how. I went to sleep that first night, and the next morning, a boy woke me up. He asked me…”

Ushijima reflects on this.

“He told me...to draw a volleyball,”


	2. two years ago

“If you don’t mind...could you draw me a volleyball?”

Ushijima blinked the sleepiness away, and rubbed his eyes. He squinted in the face of the sun and the boy hovering above him.

“A...volleyball?”

The boy nodded eagerly. His orange hair flapped around and framed his face in soft waves. “A volleyball!” He grinned widely and his wide eyes landed squarely on Ushijima’s notebook, poking just so out of his bag. He squirmed and jittered in place, looking like he needed to pee, as Ushijima retrieved it. He was like a puppy, in a way. Somehow, that was endearing.

Ushijima clicked his pen once and opened the notebook to the first clean page. With a couple lines and curves, he soon had an image of a volleyball drawn.

The boy peered at the sketch, and frowned. “That’s too deflated,”

Silently, Ushijima tried again.

“Too worn,”

With only a little more force in his pen strokes, Ushijima produced another volleyball. 

“You smeared the ink,” sighed the boy, and his eyes zeroed in more. “Why’re you using your left hand?”

“I’m a lefty,”

All at once, the boy seemed to sparkle. “That’s so cool! You’re so cool!” But then he frowned. “But you can’t even draw a volleyball,”

The way he had said that, it made something spike inside of Ushijima. With a couple quick strokes, he had drawn a box on what remained of the page. When the boy peered at it, Ushijima remained entirely unapologetic. “It’s a box. Your volleyball is inside,”

“It…” says the boy, taking in this sight. “It’s perfect!”

“Really?”

He nodded, and traced the lines of ink beneath his finger. “I wanna open it up now! I wanna spike!” His big brown eyes locked onto Ushijima once again. “Will you toss for me?”

“I don’t...I was a spiker,” said Ushijima. “Back when I played volleyball,”

The boy’s eyes became narrowed at Ushijima. “We’ll compete,”

As he spoke, another breeze picked up, carrying particles of sand. The sound of the wind seemed to cement how vast this landscape really was. And with just the two of them here, it felt massively lonely.

Despite himself, Ushijima laughed. His cheeks had begun to hurt from smiling. “How can we compete...with just us,”

“I’ll find a way,” the boy said suddenly, so sharply, that Ushijima could believe him. “If it’s volleyball...I’ll find a way,” The sound of the sand around them was a peaceful kind of white noise. It made the boy’s voice that much more intense, and for a moment, Ushijima was caught in it’s spell. But then, reality crashed back in.

“Who are you?”

“Me?” The boy planted his thumb in the center of his chest. His smile spread widely across his face. “I’m the little giant,”

At this, Ushijima couldn’t help but snort. His stoic demeanor cracked at the edges, and the fissures seemed to spread rapidly, until he was shaking all over. “The little giant?”

“I am!” said the boy, and when he pouted, even the tips of his orange hair seemed petulant. “I’m the tallest one on my planet,”

“Your planet?”

It was silent between them, for a long moment. The little giant fiddled with his nails. He ran his hands through the sand and let the particles slide between this fingers.

“My planet,” he said, finally. “It’s really far from here…” 


	3. barren soil

When the little giant spoke again, his mind seemed to be somewhere else entirely.

“It’s small,” he began, “I can walk around it in a minute. It has two volcanoes,”

“Volcanoes?”

“They’re small...like, not as big as the ones here,” As he said this, the little giant cracked a smile. “I clean them out every day, even though one’s inactive. But one never knows,”

“One never knows,” Ushijima repeated.

The little giant nodded, and continued. “And I have to be careful with my volleyballs, or they’ll fly off into space...and I’ll never see them again,”

He reached out and traced Ushijima’s drawing once again, with the tip of his finger. “Is this ball good?”

The question caught Ushijima off guard.

“Of course,”

The little giant sighed in relief. “That’s good...I’ll take good care of it. I won’t let it fly away. Not like the others,” He very pointedly ignored Ushijima’s gaze. “Sometimes, seeds blow by and plant themselves. They’re really pretty, when they bloom. But they die so quickly,”

He paused to take a breath. 

“But then...one of them stayed,” he said, and new light glimmered in his eyes. “It grew roots, it kept growing, and the anticipation killed me! I was like, gwah! Bwah!”

“...gwah?”

“I waited forever,” the little giant continued on. “For that flower to bloom. She wouldn’t do it for ages. But then - all at once, she showed me her petals - soft, red, the prettiest rose I’ve ever seen,”

The boy beamed at the memory. “And then...she started talking to me!”

This completely caught Ushijima off guard. “Flowers don’t talk,”

“That’s what I thought!” The little giant exclaimed. “But this one did, so I was like, uwah?? But she actually had a lot to say! She asked me for water, and talked about herself,”

As the day wore on, it became harder for Ushijima to fight this - to doubt the boy before him. It felt like the desert itself was enveloping him in it’s infinity. And if he wasn’t careful, he could have lost himself in the endless dunes and seamless sky.

“You have to care deeply for flowers,” he said. “Nothing can grow from barren soil,”

The little giant cocked an eyebrow at Ushijima’s advice. “Of course,” he said. He fell silent, as if he was trying to recollect his thoughts. “I did care for her. I gave her anything she asked for,”

Words pooled at the edges of Ushijima’s mouth, and stayed there. No matter how hard he tried, there was nothing he could say. Despite being only arm’s length away, this boy seemed to still be among the stars.


	4. matters of consequence

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you might have noticed that i'm terrible at updating regularly :')

No matter how carefully Ushijima studied his motorbike, its mechanical workings would not reveal their secrets to him. Night was settling around them, painting the sand in shadows, the sky a rich indigo. 

He only had so much battery power left in his flashlight. He cursed under his breath and tried to think harder. But the little giant’s voice continued to cut into his reverie. The boy talked on and on, and with such animation.

“She was so vain!” The little giant said. “That little rose. She made her petals pretty and asked me how they looked,” 

When Ushijima didn’t reply, the boy continued talking. “And you can’t just tell a flower they’re ugly - she tried so hard, and she was so proud - and she really did look beautiful, and I let her know, every day - “

His chatter distracted Ushijima, causing him to drop his wrench. He fumbled for it uselessly. The darkness was beginning to cover them thickly. With a sudden jerky moment, he turned around. His eyes flashed fire and seemed to burn the boy. “Stop talking! It’s distracting!”

For a split second, the little giant seemed hurt. A fat teardrop formed at the corner of his eye. But then he opened his mouth, and shot back his own flames. “You...you’re just like the adults!”

Ushijima looked down at himself, an adult. 

“You don’t…” said the little giant, anger flashing in his eyes. “You go on and on about matters of...constant...concept…” He stuttered over his words, the gears in his brain working hard to find the right term.

“Matters of consequence?”

“...what’s ‘matters of consequence’?”

There were many things Ushijima could have said in reply. But most of them would not repair his motorbike, or get him back to civilization, or stop the tears streaming from the little giant’s eyes.

“They’re important things,” he finally said. “Things that matter,”

“And my flower doesn’t matter?” The little giant spat. “That’s not true! I cared for her. I made sure she was happy. She’s the most important flower...the most special one, in the entire universe. And that doesn’t matter?” 

But he seemed to be working himself into a frenzy; his small fists were shaking, and the tremors spread through his body. His words wobbled and his shoulders sagged. 

“I’ve been gone for so long,” he went on. “I don’t even know if she’s okay…And I left so quickly…”

This was the final straw. With one shuddering sob, his legs gave way. Ushijima caught him just in time. The little body was barely anything in his arms.

After a long, long moment, the little giant’s cries slowly subsided. Though he still held on tightly to Ushijima, he wasn’t shaking as much anymore. 

“You left?” Ushijima asked. And the second right after the words left his mouth, he wanted to smack himself. Of course the little giant had come a long way from home, to come all the way here, to this desolate land. 

But the boy didn’t seem to take offense. When he nodded, his chin rubbed up against Ushijima’s shoulder. “That morning, I cleaned out the volcanoes - even the inactive one. Just in case. I said goodbye to my flower. I told her I’d come back. And I thought she believed me - but I didn’t say how long I’d be gone - what if she’s given up?”

“She hasn’t,” said Ushijima, suddenly, without thinking. 

“You think so?”

It was quiet between them. The air was still - not even the sand moved. The stars came out one by one, filling the sky with pinpoints of luminescence. Out here, with nothing but the scorched landscape around them, the galaxies seemed to come alive.

The little giant eventually pulled away from Ushijima, and laid on his back. He took in the sight of the cosmos, and his arm swung up to point at a distant corner of the sky. “My planet’s there,” he said, and his fingertip traced the stars. It settled slowly, at one very specific point. “And then, I met the king on that planet,”


End file.
